Gender Equality: 10 Innovation and Technology perspectives for DigitALL on Women’s Day

International Women’s Day

The theme for International Women’s Day, being celebrated on 8th March 2023 is DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality. This is an extremely relevant theme for two reasons. Firstly, technology is all pervasive and has disruptive potential to bring about changes, in business and society. Hence, innovation and technology can help us leapfrog the gender gap, if we use it creatively. And, this brings us to the second aspect of women in technology. For quite some time, technology has been seen as a left brained domain, and has been dominated by males. While this is changing at it’s own pace, we need to have many more women in the technology and innovation ecosystem, in order to bring more creative solutions.

Diverse Perspectives on Gender Diversity and Equality

On this occasion of International Women’s Day, let us take a leaf out of the theme, and look at some perspectives that are related to the key aspects of the theme:

• Innovation and Creativity to solve the world’s biggest problems
• Technology for disruptive transformation
• Gender Equality beyond tokenism, through real impact

In doing so, let us traverse through few important domains where either of these themes have played out. Since a lot of relevant content has been published at From The Experts Mouth, and written by, or relating to women, we will leverage the same to illustrate these points with examples. So, let us dive straight into Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality.

How can we achieve Gender Equality through Innovation and Technology?

Here are ten ways of achieving gender equality, and creating a better world for all of us, by leveraging technology, and through innovative and creative solutions.

#1 – Getting Women Back To Work

One of the biggest impediments to achieving gender equality, at work, or in society, is women gradually leaving the workforce. The reasons for this are well known, and consequently, it is almost seen as fait accompli.

However, it is possible to reverse the trend, and create structured programs for women returning back to work. Nabanita De, an eminent woman in technology, had written earlier about her experience with creating a platform for returnships, i.e. women returning back to work.

#2 – Age is no barrier to creativity and enterprise

The concept of returnship, can in fact be extended much further. What about all the women, who have never been a part of the workforce? Our team at From The Experts Mouth, interacted with a dadi-poti duo (grandmother – granddaughter), wherein the former took up entrepreneurship (or any kind of work) at the young age of 78!

Such examples demonstrate that age is just a number, and if we set our minds to it, we can achieve anything! On this Women’s Day, we need to celebrate and inspire many more such stories. Here are the links to the video and the post, from Sheela Bajaj and Yukti Bajaj, the grandmother and granddaughter duo, in conversation with Manasi Srivastava.

#3 – DigitALL: Where Art meets Technology

The awe inspiring craft of the grandmother, naturally leads us to the world of art and creativity. In line with the theme of DigitALL on this year’s Women’s Day, here is an example of art meeting technology.

The popular Bohra Sisters, shared their experiences of creating digital art, as they keep winning hearts through stop motion storytelling. Check out their journey, and be ready to soak in the nostalgia of Bollywood music, re-created using the latest animation technology.

If you are more intrigued by conventional art, here is an ensemble of art from some of our women authors

#4 – Creativity where it matters the most

One of the most common advice that I hear is to play to your strengths, rather than worrying about your weakness. We saw this playing out well in the case of the grandmother, who created an enterprise from her skills in the crafts. Here is another example, from a story we covered in one of our episodes of Unleash With FTEM (From The Experts Mouth).

The name Get-A-Whey may sound familiar, either because you would have eaten their whey protein based ice-cream, or would have seen them on the popular Shark Tank. Catch hold of this episode, where the Co-Founder, Pashmi Shah, speaks about how the family rallied around Jimmy Shah, to develop an innovative product, right out of their home kitchen, and helped her scale it all the way to successfully pitching at Shark Tank.

While funding stories tend to grab headlines, let us not lose sight of the lesson that is relevant in the context of the theme of gender equality through innovation and technology. Check out the Inside Scoop of the Shark Tank journey, in a post format, or on video, and share profusely with your network. Can you imagine the potential, if we are able to bring all the creativity and innovation, just from the kitchen, to the markets?

#5 – Entrepreneurship

As we spoke about Shark Tank, the poster child of entrepreneurship and the startup ecosystem, let us also turn our attention to this domain. Most ventures in this domain are built on the pillars of innovation and technology, and have disruptive transformational potential, either by uplifting the woman entrepreneur, or by changing the society in significant ways.

There are countless stories of women entrepreneurs, but I am limiting myself to links to these three stories. The first one features a cruelty free vegan cosmetics business. The second one makes up for the excessive digital screens embedded in the DigitALL theme, and you will enjoy this natural toy story. The third one is an example of college girls setting up a small business that started off on Instagram. You can browse through all articles on FTEM here, or browse through categories by clicking through the relevant tags.

#6 – Putting Purpose First

As you might have observed from the nature of many of these business ventures that we have discussed so far, there is a pattern. Most of these ventures have been created with a purpose, that is probably far bigger than the venture itself. In order to create a more equal and better world, we need to see many more examples of people in general, and women in particular, leveraging their skills and resources to solve meaningful problems.

In this context, here is a fine example of the efforts made by Gitanjali Rao, the first ever TIME Kid of the Year. While Gitanjali has been recognized for her scientific pursuits and development of a water lead measuring device, my article speaks about the public reaction on YouTube to her accomplishments. This curious case of comments is an eye opener about our collective attitude as a society, and what we need to do to set things on the track to gender equality and embracing an innovation driven culture.

Here are some more relevant examples of entrepreneurs solving the problems in society, through innovation, creativity and technology. The first example is of a sustainability tech venture by Anushka Jain, that helps build a circular sharing economy, aided by matching algorithms. The second post is by the founder of a glutten free products company in Nigeria, Africa, Amede Achingale, who shares her invaluable insights on how to avoid crisis in a business. The third post is about an initiative by Palakh Khanna to break the ice, one taboo at a time. We certainly need an open discussion, even before we can strive to achieve gender equality or social equity across the board.

#7 – Health and Fitness

We came across several women-led ventures relating to the broader health and fitness space so far in this post. One of the domains where science and technology can be leveraged is the medical sciences field. So, here are three posts from women medical practitioners, celebrating all women who have helped us lead healthier lives, and inspiring many more.

The first post here contains a NEAT way to reduce weight without exercise by Dr. Aruna A Birbal Jain. The advice is particularly relevant on this occasion, as it encourages everyone to contribute to household chores, thereby facilitating gender equality. The second one is a video from ‘Season 1 of Unleash With FTEM’, where I speak with Lisa Dobson, and help spread awareness about Lymphedema. The relevant insights are also available in this post about Lymphedema. The third post by Dr. Sharwari D Dua addresses 9 burning questions about Diabetes, one of the biggest lifestyle diseases of our times.

#8 – Finance

One of the areas where least progress has been achieved towards gender equality is that of personal finance. We have seen many examples of extremely well qualified women professionals, who are unable, or not inclined, to manage their personal finance. Financial literacy for women needs to be placed towards the top of our pecking order.

The theme for International Women’s Day in 2021 sought to address this issue. Check out my post on challenging financial dependence, and do not miss the embedded video of one of the most powerful social experiments on this subject.

The second post is a segue into the world of financial planning and abundance by Rohini Rathour, who has managed a corpus of millions of pounds in the United Kingdom. She shares a four part series on achieving abundance, and the links to the other parts are provided in this post on Abundance.

The third post below directly addresses the DigitALL aspect of this year’s theme, as Tanisha Singh helps decode neobanks – a technological innovation that can disrupt the financial services space, and help create products and solutions that can help address the gender equality gaps.

#9 – Flashback: Breaking The Bias

Since we stumbled upon the theme for Women’s Day 2021, let us also take a look at the theme for last year’s Women’s Day in 2022. The idea was not to break the bias only on a day or year, but to revisit the efforts in the coming times.

There have been so many posts published on our website that seek to break the bias, directly or indirectly. Here is a video that we had published on our YouTube channel last year on the occasion of Women’s Day 2022, sharing many different perspectives across domains about how we are breaking the bias. Do give it a watch, and share with your network – the theme may be a year old, but the messages are eternally relevant. Let us hope we are able to transform society to such an extent that these messages become redundant and anachronistic.

#10: Bonus Perspectives

We have covered a lot in this post on so many diverse aspects of achieving gender equality through different routes. Since the core theme involved DigitALL, we focused a lot on the world of innovation, creativity and technology solving the problems of business, careers and society. As a consequence, we did not touch upon some of the timeless virtues that are quite conspicuously more predominant in women. While the focus seems to be on nudging women to do more, let us also take a moment to express gratitude to, and celebrate women, in areas where they are already doing far more than their fair share to make the world a better place.

These are only three prompts to get you started, but do mention in the comments on what you think are the areas where the contribution of women should be celebrated much more than what we are doing today.

On that note, wish you all a very happy Women’s Day!

About The Author

Rajiv Maheshwari is a business and start-up advisor, and the co-founder of From The Experts Mouth. He is a management professional with over 25 years of experience, and worked as CEO for a decade, and in leadership roles with NYSE listed companies such as Accenture and WNS.

He is a Chartered Accountant and MBA (Director’s Merit List from IIM Bangalore) and an autodidact, who is on the path of self-directed life long learning and sharing. He is a thought leader, author and keynote speaker and has developed several frameworks to bridge the gap between academia and industry.